


Torrere

by JeanLuciferGohard



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies), Mad Max: Fury Road
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Other, Pre-Canon, Self-Harm, Toast is my fucking favourite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-25
Updated: 2015-06-25
Packaged: 2018-04-06 02:06:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4203867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JeanLuciferGohard/pseuds/JeanLuciferGohard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Toast character-study, from arriving at the Citadel to leaving it behind<br/>or:<br/>Toast the Knowing does not come by the name lightly<br/>or:<br/>complicated relationships between women are complicated</p>
            </blockquote>





	Torrere

The first time anyone — Angharad, Capable, Miss Giddy, who clucks her tongue and murmurs “poor thing” under her breath — sees Toast, she is already all in white, and her hair hangs in sleek, coiled ropes almost to her waist, and _He_ is hefting the weight of them in his hand, with the choked-off grunt in the back of his throat that Angharad knows means he’s pleased.

The next time anyone sees Toast is the morning after, when she gets up out of bed, but her hair doesn’t, just stays there like a shadow on the pillow, and she scrubs her palm over the scruff at the nape of her newly-bare neck  without saying a word to anyone—not Angharad, or Capable, or Miss Giddy, who shakes her head and presses her lips together.

And the next time after that is after _He_ comes for her, and Toast comes back with the skin around her left eye bruised and split, and a hitch in her walking, and her anger furled tight around her shoulders to keep her warm at night.

Nobody knows where it is, or _what_ it is, or why, even after _He_ (he himself even, won’t trust anyone else around his Wives, oh no) guts the place open,  again and again, nobody can find where Toast is keeping that small sharp _something_ she did it with.

Miss Giddy tells her it...may not go well for her, if it fails to grow back, and Toast says “I know.”

It is the only thing Toast says, to anyone, for  three weeks.

[x]

The belts make it hard to sleep at night.

Sometimes,  Angharad  pricks her fingertips open on the teeth, or presses her heels back onto them until they bleed, but it’s not enough, and she’s His _favourite_. The Organic Mechanic wraps her fingers and feet and still nobody knows where Toast keeps her sharpness.  The belts hurt, but it hurts more when he takes them off.

(It hurts worst when he pretends to be kind)

[x]

He calls Angharad “beloved” and “my dear” and “my girl” and “mine” and Miss Giddy calls her “love” and Capable calls her “Splendid”.

Angharad likes being Splendid.

But _He_ keeps _forgetting her name_ , which is _Angharad_ , the Splendid Angharad, not “my-dear-girl-love”

Toast doesn’t call her anything.

Toast (the Knowing), when she speaks, _if_ she speaks, has a voice like a bullet, clipped and cold.

Angharad calls them anti-seeds.

Toast calls them home.

[x]

Toast (the Knowing) knows:

  * how to load a gun, and shoot it
  * how to keep a secret
  * that Angharad is His favourite
  * that she is not



and it _galls_ , after everything else, after _everything_ , that she’s not even that good. The third.

Not even _third_ , she _knows_ there were others before even Angharad, He’s too old not to have had others, and Toast hates Him for it, and hates Angharad for being his favourite and throwing it away, hates that she is _kind_ , hates Capable and Miss Giddy and hates herself for hating and knows that this is going to eat her alive.

Her hair is getting too long again.

[x]

Angharad explains it, splaying gauzy fingers above her eye, across her jaw; He keeps forgetting her name, she is going to _make_ him remember, and Toast, Toast folds her arms and her anger around herself.  Toast says “Capable can do it.”

Capable can do most anything, but not this.

“She won’t.” Anghaarad closes her eyes, and almost smiles, thin and sad. “She wouldn’t…”

Wouldn’t cut deep enough. Wouldn’t want to hurt her. Capable wont—

But Toast will do what is needful.

They have windows, and in them, the sun is going down like it’s bleeding out, painting a red line across the brown back of her neck as Toast bows her head and turns her back.

“How’re you gonna hide it from Him, then? You’re gonna have to, or He’ll send you right to Organic the second He sees it, and they’ll stitch you up, and if they get you soon enough, it won’t take.” she murmurs harshly, red on her lips in the window.

Angharad sets her jaw. “I won’t feel well. I’ll be in bed.”

“Organic. Can’t have His _favourite_ catching sick.”

There is a long moment, Angharad watching Toast watch the Sun bleeding out with her head cast down, with a knob of bone pressing up against the bare skin of her neck, which seems, suddenly, very vulnerable.

She wants to reach out and—

But Angharad doesn’t, and Toast murmurs “You are, you know. And Capable’s.” she snorts. “Miss Giddy’s.” Toast presses her temple to the window, says “It means ‘Beloved’. Did you know that? That’s what ‘Angharad’ means.”

She does, this time, Angharad reaches out to cup her hand across the back of Toast’s neck, and whispers “I’m sorry”.

“Capable can keep Him busy.” she replies, after a long silence, and Toast sucks in a breath, continues, “ _I_ can keep Him busy. Long enough for it to take.” She turns to cut off the thanks bubbling on Angharad’s lips with a hard look. “I can still change my mind.”

But she almost smiles.

Tonight, then.

When it’s dark.

[x]

Capable curls her fingers into the warm empty space where Angharad used to be with a sleep-soft mumble; Angharad smooths her hair back until she stills again, tucking the loose ends back into Capable’s braid.

The window-ledge, and the closest bed belong to Toast, by right of stubborn silence and cut hair. Angharad crosses the room in a blur, but she crosses, and they are knee to knee in the dark, which isn’t dark at all; there is a Moon, something is burning (something always is), and Toast’s eyes are enormous and luminous and the exact same colour as the middle of the night. In her hand is something small and sharp.

Neither speaks.

Angharad knows she can’t risk waking anyone.

Toast is simply the Knowing.

So Angharad (Splendid) digs her heels into the teeth of her belt, digs her hand into Toast’s where it’s braced on her knee, all the way through A—N—G—H…

The sharpness comes first, then Toast’s fingertips, wiping the blood out of her eyes.

[x]

Toast almost wants to ask if she likes it, despite herself. Despite everything, it seems so _important_ that Angharad is pleased, that this was right. But Toast has three things, and three things only, left to her name, and they are her pride and her anger and her sharpness, so she says nothing, just shuffles sideways on her knees to move out of the window.

Angharad  strains at her dim reflection, tracing the cuts with her gauzy fingers, and nods.

“So what does ‘Toast’ mean?” she says, hushed, instead of ‘thank you’. It’s not a place for those.

“Dunno.” Toast lies, tucking her sharpness away again, knowing that Angharad sees it, knowing that Angharad knows that she knows and trust, maybe, at the end of the world, looks like a knife in the dark.

(a long, long time ago, before the Before, it meant “burning")

[x]

When she is standing very straight, next to Angharad, the top of Toast's head is just level with the hollow of Angharad's throat; Capable is half a head taller, and the Dag, on the rare occasions Toast lets her, can tuck her under her chin with room to spare. She only just reaches Cheedo's shoulder. When she is asleep, curled tight around herself in a huddled comma, Toast looks very small.

Sometimes, Miss Giddy thinks that there cannot possibly be enough of Toast to hold all of herself in. Other times, it isn't smallness at all, but a compactness, an efficiency of form, everything stripped down to only what you'd _need_. It's hard, she tries, but it's hard not to think of everything in terms of the cars, when it's been so long, and Toast is a person who is four wheels and an engine block bolted onto a bare frame, and that's all you need, really, to move forward.

Wheels and an engine and a bit of fire.

(Toast, from _toster_ , from _tostus_ , from _torrere,_ "to burn")

[x]

Toast the Knowing knows:

  * There is probably no such thing as the Green Place
  * It doesn't matter
  * They're going anyway



She rolls the words over on her tongue, testing.

"We're going to the Green Place"

Angharad nods, and folds Toast against her side, and murmurs her agreement.

"We're not coming back."

Toast tucks her sharpness in against Angharad's hip, in a fold of her dress, and slips away to make sure the Dag and Cheedo are ready before Angharad, the Splendid Angharad, has time to be surprised.

[x]

They leave at Dawn.

 


End file.
